NOW & THEN
30 JANUARY
1641: Portuguese surrendered Malacca in Malaya to the Dutch.
1647: Scots handed King Charles I to parliamentary forces.
1790: First purpose-built lifeboat, The Original, launched at South Shields.
1840: Emperor of China forbade all trade with Britain.
1857: Naval uniform for Royal Navy ratings authorised.
1858: The Hallé Orchestra, Manchester, performed its first public concert.
1889: Crown Prince Archduke Rudolf of Austria and his lover, Baroness Marie Vetsera, 17, were found dead at the royal hunting lodge of Mayerling, near Vienna.
1902: Britain signed treaty with Japan on independence of China and Korea.
1933: Adolf Hitler was appointed German chancellor by president Paul von Hindenburg.
1943: Soviets destroyed German army near Stalingrad.
1951: Film star Elizabeth Taylor, 19, divorced her first husband, Nicky Hilton, in Los Angeles.
1957: UN called on South Africa to reconsider apartheid policy.
1964: South Vietnamese General Nguyen Khanh seized power in coup in Saigon.
1965: State funeral of Sir Winston Churchill.
1968: Vietcong captured the US embassy in Saigon.
1970: Two students were killed and more than 200 wounded as demonstrators stormed presidential palace in Philippine capital of Manila.
1972: Bloody Sunday in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, when 13 protest marchers were killed by British paratroopers.
1972: Pakistan left the British Commonwealth.
1979: White Rhodesians approved new constitution to give blacks eventual control of the nation.
1986: President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines pledged to relinquish power if he lost to Corazon Aquino in the election due on 7 February.
1989: United States closed its embassy in besieged Afghan capital of Kabul.
1989: Temperatures in Alaska plummeted to 80ºf below zero and many Eskimos were so cold they were forced to leave.
1990: Nineteen seamen lost when freighter Flag Theofana sank in the English Channel.
1991: American and Iraqi troops clashed in first ground battle of Gulf war at Khafji.
1992: Estate agent Stephanie Slater released after being held captive for eight days by a kidnapper. A £175,000 ransom was paid.
1992: US military announced it would halt or cut back operations at 83 sites in Europe.
1996: Islanders on Eigg called on their landlord, German artist Marlin Eckhard Maruma, to invest £15million in the island or leave.
1997: Les Woodcock, a Bradford University professor, who took 23 years to work out an equation, admitted that it was “no use whatsoever”. He discovered that a hexagonal close-packed lattice is less stable than a crystal-face, centred cubic lattice.
2000: Kenya Airways Flight 431 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off Ivory Coast, killing 169.